Teal warrior was oilier
AUSTRALIA’S elite used to at least pretend to get along with their social and economic inferiors. They’d knock around awkwardly with them at the football. They’d fake interest in the same music. Attempting to blend in, they even stole an entire political party from the working class.
But then our elite found a way to not only put a comfortable distance between themselves and ordinary Australians, but also to punish the lower orders for their spiritual and cultural deficiencies.
Our elite discovered climate change – and they’ve been using it ever since as a weapon against normal, productive people.
The Teals, even more than the Greens, are the ultimate Australian example of privilege and wealth consolidating behind climate change’s moral shield.
They’ve got other shields. Teal sponsors, MPs and candidates are so securely rich as to be economically insulated from any downsides to their environmental demands.
Those downsides would be crushing for many, but Teals and their kind have already loaded up their bank accounts and property portfolios.
Fixing the planet is a job for others – or next generations who’ll simultaneously be denied the path to economic liberty provided by oil, coal and cheap energy.
“The world they are trying to create would be devastating for the poorest people on the planet,” academic Ralph Schoellhammer wrote recently about the broader green movement.
“The elimination of poverty and improvement of living conditions is only made possible through access to energy in all forms and petrochemical processes enabled by fossil fuels.”
Sydney’s Helen Conway knows all about fossil fuels. For 12 years until 2011, Conway worked for oil giant Caltex (since rebranded as Ampol).
But Conway has lately undergone some rebranding of her own, turning away from lucrative oil administration – at one point she was paid nearly $880,000 by Caltex in just a single year – to become North Shore’s Teal candidate in this month’s NSW election.
Conway now wants major parties to halt or slow new coal and gas production, and to make a more rapid shift to renewable energy.
But what of her previous career with Caltex? No matter. Conway found a wonderfully Teal excuse.
“I wasn’t actually running the refinery, the terminals, the depots,” she said. “I was the company secretary and general counsel.”
In other words, Conway wasn’t some labourer scratching together eighty grand or so to put his kids through school and pay off a suburban mortgage.
She was pulling down more than 10 times as much by poncing about in an office and never getting her hands dirty, so let’s all give the poor woman a break.
Incidentally, Conway was previously a big wheel at the Australian Gender Equality Council and CEO of the Workforce Gender Equality Agency.
Yet somehow male oil workers still only receive a tiny fraction of the salaries paid to female oil executives.
Perhaps Conway should’ve completed a little more of her wagelevelling mission. Unfinished tasks look terrible on a resume.
Conway’s campaign, according to millionaire Teal financier Simon Holmes a Court, shouldn’t be badly hurt by last week’s Caltex controversy. “Helen,” he said, “has always been upfront and honest about her past.”
Which makes her sound like a reformed drug mule. Still not as cool as running the refinery, the terminals or the depots, though.
Liberal climate change warrior Matt Kean also accidentally made Conway seem more appealing.
“She’s built her entire career on the back of big oil,” green Kean raved.
“Helen Conway’s teal T-shirt should be smeared in black oil.”
Just like an oil worker, then. The class war indicators sure are flying, which is no great shock considering Kean and Conway are from the same class of moneyed anti-carbonists.
The main economic distinction between the two is that a big chunk of Conway’s wealth came straight from fossil fuel while Kean’s wealth – like all of society’s wealth – is an indirect fossil fuel consequence.
Touchingly, Conway is now doing her best to break the fossil fuel habit.
“I have been trying for six months to buy an electric vehicle,” she said last week.
If elected, Conway will fit in well with federal Teals. Some of them, too, forgot to buy electric cars, install solar panels or do anything much to reduce their carbon output.
But they sure enjoy telling others to choose climate-saving options.
Even if, unlike our cashed-up Teals, they can’t afford them.